


When the Fun Stops

by katikat



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 10:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15484176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katikat/pseuds/katikat
Summary: On a mission, Mac and Jack are captured. That’s when it stops being fun. Jack's POV. (Unbeta'd)





	When the Fun Stops

They’re in a country where they should  _not_ be, doing things they should  _not_  be doing. But that’s nothing new, it’s their everyday bread. What’s new is that they get caught.

And that’s when the fun stops.

Afterwards, within a couple of hours following their capture, they almost escape, using a truly ingenious plan that Mac cooks up in that ginormous brain of his. They  _almost_ escape.  _Almost_. At the most inopportune moment namely their captors’ reinforcements arrive, something he and Mac couldn’t have known about - and with them, the terrorist leader.

And that’s when the true nightmare begins.

They might despise the bastard, but he’s no idiot. It only takes him a minute to figure out who the brain is, who came up with the escape plan - and who will, no doubt, come up with another. And he makes sure it won’t happen again.

When they bring Mac back to the cell, Jack barely recognize him underneath all the blood. It seems that there isn’t an inch of skin on the kid that’s not bruised or cut or scraped raw. When the guards drop Mac to the floor, he only makes the softest sound of protest, nothing more.

Jack pulls him into his lap as gently as possible - the floor’s very cold and Mac’s shivering - and tries to wipe the blood off the kid’s face with the hem of his dirty t-shirt. It’s no use, though, it still keeps welling up.

Mac blinks up at him with bruised and swollen eyes and croaks out very quietly, “Sor-ry…” As if it was his fault that they got caught, that they didn’t escape, the whole thing. When it wasn’t. Jack knows none of it, not a single thing, is Mac’s fault.

He tells that to Mac - but Mac’s not listening anymore. At some point he fainted, the pain and blood-loss and sheer physical and mental exhaustion took their toll on him, apparently. So Jack just sits there, holding him, rocking him… feeling utterly  _helpless_.

Some time later - hours? days? - the cell door slams open and guards barge in, waving guns and shouting urgent orders in a broken, heavily accented English. It takes Jack a moment to realize that they’re being taken somewhere else.

“He can’t be moved!” Jack snaps, looking down at Mac who hasn’t stirred in hours, who seems to be barely breathing. At least he stopped bleeding. Jack tries to find comfort in small blessings.

One of the men steps closer and cocks his gun, aiming it at Mac’s head. “He go or he dead,” he states firmly.

And Jack believes him.

Carefully, he moves Mac so that he can level himself up into a crouch, then he picks Mac up; he feels scarily…  _insubstantial_ in Jack's arms, as if he were fading away. It’s a terrible thought.

When Jack gets up, his knees and his back protest but he grits his teeth and straightens up - the gun still pointed at Mac’s head is incentive enough. Jack would crawl if he had to, anything to protect the kid. Then, under the watchful gaze of several heavily armed men, he starts walking, prodded with a gun muzzle in the back.

And so it goes, again and again. They move them from place to place, mostly in trucks, usually at night. Jack has no idea how much time has passed since their capture, where they are or if anyone’s even looking for them. But he does his best not to lose hope. If he did that, if he truly believed that nobody were coming for them…

He would end it, Jack realizes and that thought would make him cry if he had any moisture left in his body. If he thought they really had no chance… he would snap the kid’s neck and end his suffering. His own fate afterwards would be irrelevant, his life meaningless.

Because Mac  _is_ suffering and it’s breaking Jack’s heart, more and more with each little hurt added to the list. Maybe the terrorists can’t make  _Mac_ talk - the beating, the trauma, everything that happened, seemed to have robbed him of the capacity to think clearly - but they quickly realized that there was no better leverage against their other prisoner than the kid. The hard truth is that Jack would tell them anything, anything at all, if only they stopped hurting Mac…

Their eventual rescue’s so unexpected that when it happens, when their friends finally come for them, Jack can only sit there and stare at them in dumbfounded silence for a long time, holding Mac tightly with his left shoulder twisted towards the door of the cell in a vain attempt to shield Mac from danger.

It’s  _Sarah_. Sarah and Carlos. And Charlie, too. Cage and… yes, it’s Bozer, in a desert camo and with a semi-automatic in his hands, covering them. Jack stares at them and he sees them but it’s not sinking in. That they’re here, actually  _here_. That they came. For  _them_.

Sarah drops to her knees in front of him and touches his face, slowly and gently, not making any fast, threatening moves. Her voice is thick and her eyes are full of tears when she whispers, “We’re here, Jack. We found you. And you’re going home!”

Before,  _long_ before, his heart would’ve skipped a beat at her touch. Now, all he can do is drop his eyes to Mac, gaunt and sallow in his arms. Before, her touch would’ve been important. Now, it doesn’t almost register because his mind’s full of  _keep Mac safe, keep Mac safe, keepMacsafe, keepMacsafekeepMacsafekeepMac…_

Jack makes a soft sound of protest when Carlos drops into a crouch in front of him and tries to take Mac away. He tightens his hold and almost growls at Mac’s friend, glaring at him fiercely.

But Carlos doesn’t back away. He looks Jack straight in the eye and he gives him a promise, earnest and honest and heartfelt: “I’ll protect him with my life.”

And Jack believes him. Still, it takes him a moment to loosen his cramped arms to let go and then, when Mac’s taken away - Carlos picks him up and whisks him away as if Mac didn’t weigh anything - Jack feels strangely empty. His arms feel strangely empty and his chest too. It’s… odd.  _Unsettling._

Sarah and Sam Cage help him stand and Jack forces his feet to move. He feels weak and detached, nauseated and dizzy but he forces himself to walk, to follow Carlos and Mac, because he can’t let Mac out of his sight, he  _can’t_. Being away from the kid makes his anxiety skyrocket, it steals his breath away and makes his heart hammer hard.

And then they’re out and it’s night and they’re in the desert and Jack still has no idea where they are or what day it is. They lead him to a truck and they tell him to climb in the back and because Mac’s already there, lying there on the truck bed as still and unmoving as before, Jack obeys.

Vaguely, he’s aware of Sarah’s explanation of the wheres, whys and hows of their rescue. She’s telling him that it’s them, Jack’s and Mac’s friends here and not the SEALs or the Deltas or some other special unit rescuing them because after their capture they were disavowed. Nobody was coming to get them out, not officially, so they put this little rescue mission together themselves.

Jack listens to Sarah’s explanation but he doesn’t really care, not now. Right now, all that matters is that Mac won’t have to suffer anymore, the suffering’s finally over, and Jack won’t have to contemplate breaking Mac’s neck to save him from more pain anymore. No more thoughts of Mac dying, at anyone’s hands let alone at Jack’s.

As the truck’s engine rumbles to life, the tarp at the rear end of the vehicle drops down and the darkness surrounding them deepens even more. Carlos and Sarah are in here, too, covering them with their semi-automatics, but Jack can’t see anymore. He reaches out blindly and finds Mac again. His mind remains full of  _keepMacsafekeepMacsafekeepMacsafe_ and distantly, he wonders if there’s ever going to be space enough in his head for anything else, for any other thoughts.

Then the truck starts moving, taking them away from this hellish place, and Jack realizes he doesn’t care. Mac’s safe. Everything else’s just an afterthought.


End file.
